Fallout 2 - is AC actually useful?

[thenoseknows]

I'm currently playing a character specializing in unarmed combat, and I'm using the HtH Evade perk. To test my ability to dodge attacks, I surrounded myself with several enemies and skipped my turn, which gave me 85 AC. Then I spent my next turn using up all of my action points, which gave me around 65 AP. There was no discernible difference between the two.

It's obvious that HtH Evade works, because it's giving me the extra AC. The question here is whether AC is useful. I would estimate that I get hit 9/10 times by enemies such as mercenaries, Enclave soldiers, and other armed humans. I get hit a good 3/4 of the time by lesser critters like rats and radscorpions. Is this the case with anyone else? Is HtH Evade basically a pointless perk, because enemies are going to hit you anyway?

 

[ocelot]

If the enemy attacking you has a high enough Skill, then even a high AC will not keep you from getting hit. The same way as enemies with a high AC are more difficult to hit than ones with a low AC, but AC largely ceases to matter if your Skill is at 300%.

I just did a similar experiment to yours, with Unarmed skill at 300%, Hardened Power Armor, and HtH Evade. This yielded the character an AC of 89 with all action points unused. I surrounded myself with Centaurs and Floaters, and the AC bonus clearly worked. The floaters (which have an Unarmed skill of 120 or 140 depending on whether they're Nasty or not) hit me about 50% of the time. The Centaurs (whose Unarmed skill is 110 or 120 depending on whether they're Mean or not) usually missed. This illustrates how crucial the attacker's Skill is when determining the importance of AC.

If the enemies have a very high Skill then AC usually won't help much, especially with melee range attacks which have no distance penalties to the chance to hit.